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Wellington’s Louis Johnson hits Letterman with his band the Saint Johns

“It’s kind of weird,” Louis Johnson says. “We were sitting all day long in the studio, for a 3 minute, 30 second performance. It’s like the actual performance never happened.”

It might seem that way, but it’s true — Louis, a Dreyfoos School Of the Arts graduate, Wellington native and already an entertainment industry journeyman at 23, did indeed appear with his band The Saint Johns Thursday night on “The Late Show With David Letterman,” playing their single “Open Water” and getting a cool nod from both Letterman and bespectacled bandleader Paul Shaffer.

Notably, the host’s introduction of the band mentioned that though he usually has what he called a “no beginners!” policy, he bent that rule for the Saint Johns, whose EP, also called “Open Water,” is their first release.

“When we got the gig, we were looking up a lot of Letterman performances of bands in the last 35 years, and with most people we’ve seen, (Letterman) seems to at least go over and say ‘Thanks very much,'” says Louis, who, in the interest of full disclosure, I have been covering since he was a 14-year-old kid in the local band Odd Man Out, who once played for an audience including Bruce Springsteen, and later appeared on “Live With Regis And Kelly.” He later showed up on MTV’s “My Life As Liz,” and also played me down the aisle at my wedding in 2010 (He did “Grow Old With You” from “The Wedding Singer,” because he’s very cool.)
“It was really cool that he did that intro for us, saying that ‘We don’t usually have beginners.’ We were watching his cue cards, and that wasn’t on there, which is great, so nice of them to give them that endorsement,” he says. “For a late night show to have babies like us is really cool, obviously for us. There was no reason that we got to go on there over other emerging artists, other than that they liked our record. I guess it says that you don’t have to sell 60,000 records to get booked on Letterman. And we’re glad Paul liked it!”

Louis’ trajectory to “The Late Show” began in the aforementioned Odd Man Out and continued to the band Augustine, which he formed with current singing partner Jordan Meredith back in 2009 when both attended Flagler College in St. Augustine (their current name is also rooted in their college town, named after the Saint Johns River). During that time he booked “My Life As Liz,” a documentary-ish MTV show following the adventures of star Liz Lee, who was more or less playing herself. Louis more or less played himself, or at least a version of himself, which got him some brief teen fans and some press. It didn’t last long but it laid a foundation that continued even after the screams subsided.

“That was an interesting detour,” he says. “It made it easier because now we have a base of 20,000 Twitter followers, which is basically an email list. I’m excited to have this music. It’s the first time I can point to a body of work and say ‘That’s it. That’s what I’ve wanted to do.'”

The band currently has a writing gig with producer and songwriter Dr. Luke and have some things hopefully in the works for recording deals. In the meantime, Louis says that he and Jordan are enjoying the present, even when it moves really fast.

“This is what we’ve wanted for so long, and we realize how much further we have to climb,” he says. “It’s attainable, but there’s a long journey ahead.”